The heat is so great it plays tricks with the eyes/ It turns road into water, water into sky

I want to take the afternoon off everyday. So much more civilised to go home and take a nap and then go to work. Who needs math and anthro anyway? Not I. Who needs more sleep? Me. For sure. Waking up at 4 every Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday really takes its toll, especially with AP and homework until 11:30 at night.

AP exam! AP French exam was Monday. I missed the whole day (and was surprisingly not really behind at all) and it went ok. It lasted for 6 hours. At a certain point it stops being about your skills and starts being about endurance. I was so, so happy when I got to leave.

We have a regatta this weekend, for rowing. It might have to also be my last. I started going to physiotherapy for my back and my physiotherapist, this week, said that if my back isn't better for next week, then she wants me to stop rowing for a couple of weeks, which brings me to the end of the season. Frankly, I wouldn't be worried if I weighed less, because I could coxy, but there's no way I can coxy at all. Which means I'd just be off the team.

The Undertaking

Well, somehow I survived The Clean-up of Lorien's room. 10 Things I Hate About You had it right; you do learn a lot about someone from the contents of their room. I learned quite a bit about Lorien. The first thing I learned was the most obvious thing. She is a packrat. Upon walking into her room, this was immediately apparent. The entire plac was covered in at east 2 feet of stuff. The floor was covered in clothes, the surfaces with clothes and papers. We spent two hours just going through all the stuff and making piles, throwing out the trash and piling the clothes to sort through. It was a huge undertaking and im pretty impressed at the results. You can now see the floor!

And it's official. I should be arriving in Indianapolis on July 25th. Mark your calendars! Anyone interested in going to a Harry Potter party? Again? Cause I'm just that cool.

What will make me say stay

You have heard lots about my love/hate relationship with my job over the course of this year and I wanted to make sure that I was clear on one point: despite the fact that my boss is a little wierd, and the kids sometimes don't listen and I'm forced to make them do more work than they need to and it's every day... it's still a pretty sweet job.

I realized this once again today at work. It's gotten to the point where my boss listens to me and actually trusts me. Today, she sent everyone and their brother in to my room to work with me and it went fine for about 20 min until suddenly everyone needed me at once. I ducked out for a minute and told my boss that I had too many people and she said "Ok" and fixed it. And then later I mentioned to her that all the kids needed reading books for their french reading they do every day and she immediately wrote an email aboutit to all the parents. That felt pretty cool.

Today we had an Insight Show at Greenbank which was so much fun, but a pretty bad show. Catharine as the Wizard of Oz walked into the scene at the wrong time and said "Hello Dorothy!" realized her mistake, and then said "I'll be back later." We couldn't stop laughing. During Time Warp, I'm supposed to be like Susan Sarandon's character in Rocky Horror (pre-sexual awakening) and Jon was the bf guy. I couldnt stop laughing through that scene, and to mask it I pretended to be overcome by all this talk of condoms and swooned into Jon with my face in his chest. But I was laughing my head off.

After the show, a bunch of us went to Venus Envy, since Jenn said she'd take us and it's only half a block from the PPO office. I was excited because I wanted to get the zine that a couple bloggers I read made. It was pretty much awesome. Any place that sells zines, erotica and vibrators while playing Tegan and Sara music that both the cashier and I sing along to and does all this across the street from a super uptight Bible store is cool by me. (Disclaimer: I like Bibles just fine, but not that store.) Also, all grammar nerds, feel free to fix the grammar of that last sentence.

I'll be the one who'll break my heart / I'll be the one to hold the gun

Right now, I feel short of breath, my head is spinning, I can't focus, I can't remember anything and I feel sick. I must be dying, or something. Or really sick. It can't be just the stress, because stress can't do this much, can it?

Maybe what I need to do is not think ahead. Not think about the AP exam next week or how screwed I'll be for the math test since I'm missing school for insight theatre, or how it's still six long weeks to the summer where everyone will be working except for me. I need to not think about those things. Because the only times I'm happy anymore are when I commit myself to the moment.

That's kind of sad. My favourite part of anything is anticipation. Starting as a little kid, going to sleep on Christmas Eve, hardly able to lie still even though I knew the sooner I fell asleep, the sooner Christmas morning would come. Or waking up in the morning with a smile on my face looking forward to the day ahead. Now, I wake up exhausted with a knot in my stomach and my heart rate up knowing that I'm already behind and there's nothing I can do about it. And I want that to stop.

I really want to take a day. Just relax and not worry about anything. But I can't, because I am so behind I can't even take the time to catch myself up. It's that bad. I owe Mr Magwood about 7 assignments. And yet on weekends, I can barely bring myself to do any work at all. I can't focus. I know it's because I'm overtired, but I go out all weekend because without the weekends, I wouldnt get any time at all to be happy.

Friday was that best night this weekend. I did enjoy the night with Lorien last night, but Friday made me very very happy. I went to the Planned Parenthood Ottawa Volunteer Appreciate party. Part of this party, we had been told ahead of time, would be an Erotica reading by one of the PPO board members who is an Erotica writer. It was a pretty awesome time, starting with hanging out, guessing the words on our backs (I had "Aphrodisiac" and "Orgasm") and then we all sat down for the reading. As our lovely reader is being introduced I start thinking about her name. "Megan Butcher" sounds very familiar to me. And then she gets up there and I realize, it the THE Megan Butcher of the blog Asteroidia Press and I start being fangirl and I squee a bit (sorry guys) and got very excited. She read from her blog instead of her book, a piece I really liked and then was all mingled again. I went over to talk to Megan and buy her poetry book (which she signed!), and not only was so super nice, but she knew who I was! She said that when she came in and saw my name tag, she thought it was the same Evey as the blogger. How cool is that? I was pretty happy all evening that I met one of my bloggers.

After, Seb, Emily Laura and I went to the cabaret at Club Saw (IZM 3!) which was just too much fun (Laura: There will be a bar and they won't card you but you will not be drinking because I'm there). The acts were mostly good although not all (Laura: Please don't get me fired!) and the host of the evening was my favourite person ever ("Eh bien, Merde, la!" "Parts of that, were not so funny, but other parts were funny, so it was ok")

I just need to make it through 2 more months without falling apart. I hope I can go til then, but I keep slowing down and getting further and further behind (rowing run metaphor, anyone?). I can't figure out how to catch up, I really can't.

I won't be left dancing alone to songs from the past

Yay! My article is out!

Remember like 3 months ago (maybe 4) when I told you I was going to write an article for a magazine? Well now it happenned! I have the issue right here in front of me. I can't believe it. I'm a published writer!

Although... I am quite pissed that they got my name wrong. I politely told them twice that I wanted to be published under my real name and not the name on my email address. And still they got it wrong. So my last name is half wrong. My friend read it and then excitedly told me about this article she read about Insight Theatre and that Phil Mak was quoted twice! She didn't even know that I wrote it. That really sucked.

Anyway, to all of you awesome people (<3 Jonah, Saralyn, Evan) who have been waiting for it to come out... it's out! And it's not that awesome, but it's my first (relatively) big published thing. I'm so excited.

[www.shamelessmag.com]

Paris, je t'aime

Today, the worst happenned. After months of pushing through and teetering on the edge of where I should be and just barely keeping up, I'm into the real trouble now.

I failed my first test.

Yes, it's true. I am a huge over-achiever. But really, at my school, everyone is. The fact that I'm taking a gr 12 course is nothing new. And getting over 80% average? Why, anything below that is practically a fail! What else is there? I have succumbed to the pressure. I am severely let down if any grade of mine below 85. My anthro 84.5 just isn't cutting it right now.

So, as you can imagine, I was pretty angry when I got my test back with a failing grade. I mean, I thought maybe I had a 75 (bad enough) but 49?? ME? I am the biggest control freak ever. I can't handle it. It was due to this feeling of out of control and disbelief that when I got into my car I made a rather large mistake: I told my mom about my test. She was pretty unhappy. sentences like "maybe I've been giving you too much freedom" and "This isn't good enough" and "This doesn't happen to you" were tossed at me.

The result? I don't know. Nothing so far; I've been going out a lot on the weekends lately and I will this weekend too and so far I'm still allowed. We'll see what happens though. I need to pick it up. Everything is finally catching up with me. I don't have anything left. And now I'm failing tests. This is not good.